


Bathtub

by Aestheticdenbrough



Series: Oneshots [30]
Category: IT (1990), IT (2017), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Anxiety, Anxiety Attacks, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-17
Updated: 2019-04-17
Packaged: 2020-01-15 13:45:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18500203
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aestheticdenbrough/pseuds/Aestheticdenbrough
Summary: Stan grows up to become an accountant in a happy relationship, but even he has his off days.





	Bathtub

Going to college for accounting would not be the plan of most normal young men. Stanley Uris is not your average young man, not particularly abnormal, but not much like the rest in more ways than one. The word his sixth grade teacher had coined to describe him still sticks to this day. Fastidious. Surely it fits him and it has for as far back as memory goes. He’s always been neat and organized even when he was very young, so much so that if he carried a briefcase he could have been taken for a miniature businessman. His shirts were always ironed and his dark hair slicked back lovingly by Andrea Uris, his mother. He’s still greatly the same even to this day now in his junior year of college, going out to manage people’s numbers for them. There’s something so pleasing about numbers to him, in that there’s always a set of right and wrong rules and answers. Stan likes it that way, errors are easier to correct than they seem to be in the real world. He’d learned that from one reckless boy, Bill Denbrough in his youth, they haven’t spoken in nearly ten years now. Stan would try to contact him but he seems to be even more of a loner than Stanley himself, Stan hasn’t been able to find a single social media profile of his, so it’s safe to say he has none. These days that says a lot about someone.

He’s met someone outside of a teacher who can teach him quite a lot, though. She’s a sweet young woman with bouncy brown curls and lives under the name of Patricia Blum. they’d met at the synagogue near campus some weekend and they realized that they hadn’t really crossed paths before. Her parents have always wanted her to be with a good, clean, Jewish boy so Stan was like God’s answer to honor all of the hopes she’s expressed. As a first date they’d gone out to a sweet little diner and Stan got her a bouquet of daisies. She’d said they were lovely and kept them close for most of the evening. They had burgers and delicious oven baked fries and learned a lot about each other in the process. He walked her back to her dorm where she swooned to her roommate about how she’d met the most gentlemanly man on the entire campus. He took her on two more dates before she could finally claim to her parents that she is now going steady with someone new. He has a few odd traits but he proves himself to be much greater than his faults and their budding relationship stronger than their weaknesses.

That is until the warm month of May when Mike Hanlon paid him a call from his childhood town of Derry. The call was regarding something he’d hoped and hoped that he’d forget. Something had terrorized he and his friends as children, done worse and worse to other kids. He’d like to consider himself lucky but he has a lot of trouble believing that. Those dead kids don’t need to live with the memories like he has. It almost seems that nobody really lives with the memories besides he and Mike. He keeps his voice stable through his call with the old friend but he can’t fake the blood running cold in his veins as he clicks the end call button. It’s back. He places his phone face down on his bed, pulling his pillow over it. He can pretend he has no phone and the call never happened and his childhood never happened and he and Patty can go to the diner again tonight. If he does really plan to go out tonight, he really should get ready. He’s not in the bathroom yet but he starts unbuttoning his shirt on the way to it, he needs to take a shower. It should be a hot one, try and warm the blood in his body again, melt his terror away.

He turns on the showerhead and lets the water wash over him, wetting his hair down to his face and running his hands over it to try and get the gel out of it and let the water wash more freely between the strands. He wants to feel clean, it helps calm him when he’s anxious like this, it’s like he needs it. He scrubs his skin with the cream colored loofah until he’s red over most of all his skin. He knows there can’t be any more on him that’s dirty but he can’t help it, it’s seemingly some sort of therapeutic though it’s unhealthy. He slides down to sit on the shower floor with his back against the wall. He’s shaking now, he might have already been before but he’s only noticed it now that he’s trying to be more still. His hands are quivering the worst and his fingertips are cold with nervousness. He’s crying too, an ugly kind of hiccuping sob. He knows he’s not alright, he knows he shouldn’t be trying to deal with this on his own. He stays seated on the shower floor, he breathes out a heaving sob and tries to decide what to do.

He stands up, not even bothering to get a towel or anything as he walks out into the bedroom area with water dripping down his body to the floor. He pulls the pillow off his phone again and picks it up in his trembling hand. He unlocks it with his password because the water on his hands keeps him from using the fingerprint feature. He goes to his contacts and sees one name that he decides would be the best to call for help. ‘Patty’ her contact states with a small pink heart by it. He clicks it and then presses the call button. It’s not customary to just call someone as opposed to texting first, but right now is not a customary situation. He calls her and tries to choke out what he wants to say to her, and she gets understandably worried for him and already insists on coming to see him in person.

Patricia has never seen him this way. She finds him sitting cross legged on the floor still naked and damp. She doesn’t hesitate to sit down on the floor with him and wrap him in a tight hug of safety, she knows that closeness and pressure makes him feel safe. She just wants him to feel safe. She kisses his chin and then this cheek and then up by his temple, he finds comfort in the number three. He takes in another gasping breath and leans into her lap and she runs her hand through his wet hair, the water leaving it curled slightly. “You know how much I love you, right? I say it all the time. But I mean it, this doesn’t phase me. I’m here for you,” she murmurs a soothing promise, and he finally feels calm.


End file.
